Baby sawi emerging from kitchen cutting

I hope you believe me when I tell you that this really is as brainlessly easy as it looks. Just put the stump in a shallow dish of water and walk away.

Now imagine if you did this everything you cut sawi. Or cabbage. Or chinese cabbage. Or celery. Or honestly, any kind of vegetable with this kind of bottom. Now imagine if everyone did this.

That is exactly the kind of world that I want to create and live in.

It is almost about time to stick this into the ground and let it grow into an adult sawi. If nothing else appeals to you about this kitchen waste-eliminating move, then think about harvesting your own sawi. Free sawi, yo! And now stick that free sawi in a dish of water. Voila! Another free sawi! This goes on for like evah.

Up-cycling paper cups because I have finally run out of pots for all my plants

And I don't know if this is a bad thing or bad thing. One thing for sure, farming is proving incredibly healing and therapeutic to me. In cultivating all my little seedlings and plant-lings (that's what I am calling all my baby plants grown from cuttings), I have found patience, self-reflection, clarity and prayer. Every one of my little seedlings and plant-lings are a prayer.

Only thing is that I am running out of pots. I have about thirty pots filled now and I think I really cannot go on buying pots. I have built one raised bed and I am contemplating building more. I just need to salvage material for them. Which gets my creative juices going, actually. Oh the possibilities that arise from constraints! I love it. I love the idea of being presented with all the available materials and all its limitations, and being asked to innovate. Especially up-cycling. Oh yes. Just watch. Just watch what happens next.

I see a ladybug! Hello lady ladybug!

My garden now has at least one resident ladybug in it and she's a gorgeous little beetle, isn't she? She's a tiny little thing but she is bright red and according to my sister, jf you look really, really closely to her spots, it looks like its smiling! :)

Ladybugs are categorised as beneficial bugs and I am happy to let her be among my spearmint plants. They and their larvae dine on aphids, those pesky mealy bugs and other soft bodies insects. I actually hope she will bring more of her friends around for the party because she's doing wonders for my vegetable plants.

The thing to remember about ladybugs is the brightness of her shell. Bright red bug are the good ones. Dull coloured ones are bad ones.

So the next time you see a ladybug in your garden, remember to be nice to them, ya. They are good bugs! :)

The case of the alien bug

I know what you are thinking: What on earth is that?! And in all honesty, I don't know. I personally thought it was dried leaves when I first saw it and touched one of its wings and it twitched. It twitched a bit an when back to sleep. I only got a good look at it once I realised that it was in insect. My best guess is that it is some sort of moth. This fellow is about two inches plus from head to tail.

I took this picture and consulted my gardener sifus and surprisingly, no one knew what sort of moth this is. My query was simple: Is it a pest or is it a good bug? If it is a pest, then I'd like to wake it up so that it won't lay eggs or eat my plants or carry some disease or something. But if it is a good bug, then I'd be fine to let it snooze as long as it liked.

I never got to know what this bug is. Some of the more cheeky answers I got was that it is some kind of alien bug. It was gone by the time I went to look for it again in the evening.

Blue tea evening

Among the plants that I collected during the last FTS giveaway is the 'mother-in-law's tongue.' They told me that this magnificent plant helps purifies air and we all know just how bad is the haze about a week ago. The haze has been really getting my hayfever going lately, and so I happily welcomed clean air into my house.

My telang plant has also been generous these days. I think it is really enjoying the rain lately, so it blooms quite a bit. This means that I have ample flowers to make blue tea. Like, really blue tea.

The daily evening rains has been generally welcomed by my plants. But it also means that I can't really spend my evenings with them anymore. I guess this is an opportunity to work on my indoor projects eh.

Hello lemon basil!

Okay, I am not completely sure if this is lemon basil or lime basil. The leaves do have a distinctly citrus tang with a hint of mint. Part of me thinks that this is lime basil, but the lemony flavour of the leaves keeps telling me otherwise.

The whole plant looks like a little bush of leaves and is a wonderful addition to my herb garden. I am trying to propagate the plant with cuttings. Fingers crossed that the little new ones survive and flourish!

My vegetable patch now includes kailan (Chinese kale)

I was wondering if kailan, when harvested young would result it baby kailan. Sounds logical enough, right? There would be baby kailan and left to get bigger would become 'adult' kailan. Right? Mom insists that baby kailan is a different breed of kailan altogether. They'd of course be smaller, this its 'baby' name. But no, a young kailan is not the same as a baby kailan.

So I guess that I will be letting these babies grow for now and harvesting them later on as 'adult' kailans then. Haha!

Golden Tortoise Beetle. Turning my sweet potato leaves into a buffet table.

It is interesting how an insect so cute and beautiful can cause so much destruction. There are so many holes in my sweet potato leaves now, they look like batik. Pretty. But no. Not the point of planting sweet potato leaves, which really would be more beautiful fried with belacan.

I know it looks like the beetle has gunk over it, but no. That is the shape of the beetle itself. At first, I thought it had some liquid around it too, until the insect started moving and the whole gold and transparent shell moved with it. Lovely, very lovely. But not for my garden.

Our first visit to Free Tree Society's Free Tree Giveaway

This is a shout out to the folks at Free Tree Society who organised the free tree giveaway yesterday in conjunction with the International Day of Climate Action.

It was our first visit to the FTS Nursery in Bangsar and I was delighted to find how well maintained the place is and how friendly everyone was. We arrived slightly before 9am and there were already so many people there.

The giveaways were nicely arranged by fruiting trees, shrubs, herbs, flowering plants, big plants. There was also an all-you-can-carry section outside with more goodies. Between the three of us, we happily walked away with a lemon tree, an avocado tree, a sawtooth coriander plant, a double petal blue pea plant, a spearmint plant, a cat's whiskers plant, an aloe vera plant, a curry plant and a few of those mother-in-law plants which we were told were great air purifiers to combat against this terrible haze that's going on.

I got to go back to FTS Nursery. One of those days when there are not so many people and I can spend more time appreciating all the awesome work these people are doing. Even in the little time I spent there yesterday, I learnt so much. I have some great additions to my garden now. Looking forward to more of such events. To the folks at FTS, keep up the great work!

A cup of homemade organic homegrown blue mint tea

Came home after one of those kinda days at work. It was late and dark and hazy but I just had to immerse myself in nature for just a little while, you know what I mean? I stand there among my pots of greens. I give them a little water. I tuck a couple of loose vines. And sigh.

And what does my garden give me back? I see a few bunga telang flowers smiling at me. And a few sprigs of mint too. And I know. Tea. I shall make fresh tea.

I try not to take more from my garden than what I need. So I harvested just enough to make one cup of light blue mint tea. I used two flowers and one full sprig of mint. Making fresh tea is both easy and therapeutic. The fragrance released by the mint the moment I poured in the hot water was amazing!

And so I settle for the evening, relaxed and inspired. Everything they say about consuming things you grow yourself is true. The tea was aromatic and sweet, I did not even need to add sugar! There is also the satisfaction of knowing for sure that this tea is completely organic and has no pesticides or chemical enhancers.

Just the goodness of nature in a cup. Ahhh.

Spinach flowers and spinach babies

I love spinach. Bayam Batik is one of the most common local species of spinach that we see at our markets and I absolutely love them. Especially in soup. Isn't sup bayam just one of the simplest things to cook ever? I cannot imagine anyone not loving it.

So you can imagine how excited I was to get hold of some bayam seedlings for my garden. That was about 4 months ago. Come October (and many, many delicious bowls of sup bayam later), I realise how old my bayam trees are getting, and then these babies pop up! That's right, bayam flowers and therein, seeds for the next generation of yummy sup bayam!

The best part if that cultivating them is next to effortless. One evening, I found they they sown and germinated themselves! Hello, well what do we have here? Baby bayams peeking out into the world! I am going to leave them with their parent plants until they get a little bigger before transferring them onto their own beds.

Almost time for cili padi harvest again!

I am happily surprised that there are these chilies on my one plant. And bright red too! Okay, they are strangely a wee bit... well wee. They are tiny small. Bright red and tiny small. But you know what? They pack a punch. Just like that they all say about cili padis.

Oh, but I do wish they are just a wee bit bigger. Oh well, not bad for my first attempt with my first plant. Love it!

So I found the culprit who has been terrorizing my spinach plant

And there he is. Trying to look all sweet and innocent and all when he has been chewing on my sweet potato leaves and spinach plant.

Do not be deceived by those orange eyes. He may be tiny - less than an inch long - but boy, does has he got an appetite!

And don't worry. I did not kill the poor, frightened thing. I gave him a real long scolding and sent him on his way. I have a sneaking suspicion though, that this is not the last that I see of him. Hm.

My chili plant is flowering!

This chilli plant was also a gift from SS and came to me as a wee little thing in a tiny polybag. For lack of pots, I transferred her into a small pot when I got home, only to realise that this girl is going to out grow her pot in no time!

That was how I learnt the hard way how sensitive and tempremental a chilli plant gets when she gets repotted too many times. I thought she would be happy in a nice big pot now but noooo... she has decided to sulk on me. What did she do? She refused to grow. Don't get me wrong. She did not wither or die or anything like that. She just did not grow. She stopped growing. She neither got bigger or smaller.

And she stayed that way for a long, long time. Weeks and weeks. I gave her compost and fertilizer but she just refuses to grow. I moved her pit around to different spots in the garden but nothing. So what did I do to a child throwing a tantrum? Mama leaves you in the corner. You can come out when you have calmed down.

And then one day, she did. A few extra leaves decided not to sulk anymore and popped out. I moved her around and I guess she found a spot she liked and got taller. And then, what is this? Flowers! Little yellow flowers smiling back at me!

Growing Brazillian Spinach

This Brazillian Spinach is one of the earliest plants I started my backyard garden with. Of course back then, it was just a tiny little thing with eight leaves in a small polybag. The baby Brazillian Spinach was generously donated to me by SS, an inspiring urban farmer herself in our neighbourhood.

Less than two months later, I am reaping the harvest of this plant for personal consumption on a weekly basis! This plant is a good seven months now, and is super generous with its yield. 

What can I say, this is hands down, one of the easiest vegetable to grow. Just make sure to keep her watered and she will continue to thrive. 

Yes, she is quite the drinker. It was really dry about a month ago, and she can't go two days of no water before starting to wither. I pretty much panicked when I saw her and watered her immediately and you know what? It took her five minutes (tops) to bounce back into freshness!

Her biggest foe has been mealy bugs. My remedy is a home made formula of neem oil, washing detergent and water. Need to spray her pretty often tho. But this is because her leaves are close to the soil.

Brazillian Spinach is highly recommended for any beginner to urban farming. Easy to grow, lives in a pot and goes well in soups, noodles and stir fry. There is just so much joy to this plant!